All items listed and reviewed are available for purchase directly from Brickbat Books, although quantities are limited. Brickbat Books is located at 709 South Fourth Street, in the heart of Fabric Row, in Philadelphia.

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

New Arrivals:Dust-to-Digital

Parchman Farm

Potographs And Field Recordings 1947-1959

hardcover book with 2 CDs, includes slipcase and foil stamping

"In 1947, ’48 and ’59, renowned folklorist Alan Lomax went behind the
barbed wire into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Armed
with a reel-to-reel tape deck—and, in 1959, a camera—Lomax documented as
best an outsider could the stark and savage conditions of the prison
farm, where the black inmates labored “from can’t to can’t,” chopping
timber, clearing ground, and picking cotton for the state. They sang as
they worked, keeping time with axes or hoes, adapting to their condition
the slavery-time hollers that sustained their forbears and creating a
new body of American song. Theirs was music, as Lomax wrote, that
“testified to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human
trait.”
“A few strands of wire were all that separated the prison from
adjoining plantations. Only the sight of an occasional armed guard or a
barred window in one of the frame dormitories made one realize that this
was a prison. The land produced the same crop; there was the same work
for blacks to do on both sides of the fence. And there was no Delta
black who was not aware of how easy it was for him to find himself on
the wrong side of those few strands of barbed wire…. These songs are a
vivid reminder of a system of social control and forced labor that has
endured in the South for centuries, and I do not believe that the
pattern of Southern life can be fundamentally reshaped until what lies
behind these roaring, ironic choruses is understood.” — Alan Lomax, 1958
“Black prisoners in all the Southern agricultural prisons in the
years of these recordings participated in two distinct musical
traditions: free world (the blues, hollers, spirituals and other songs
they sang outside and, when the situation permitted, sang inside as
well) and the work-songs, which were specific to the prison situation,
and the recordings in this album represent that complete range of
material, which is one of the reasons this set is so important: it
doesn’t just show this or that tradition within Parchman, but the range
of musical traditions performed by black prisoners. I know of no other
album that does that.” — Bruce Jackson, 2013

"Dust-to-Digital is excited to present the first in-depth look at the
life of Ola Belle Reed, a groundbreaking artist who is one of the
all-time greatest performers of authentic, old-time music. Ola Belle
Reed’s 1960s recordings, some of the earliest she ever made and
available here for the very first time, are counter-balanced by a disc
of modern-day field recordings of her descendants and those within her
Appalachian community that she inspired. This deluxe edition highlights
Ola Belle’s deep repertoire – folk ballads, minstrel songs, country
standards, and originals – and traces the impact her music made and is
still making today."

"In 1966, folklorist Henry Glassie traveled from Philadelphia to the
town of Oxford, Pennsylvania to see Alex & Ola Belle and the New
River Boys and Girls play their exciting brand of Southern mountain
music live, on the air, in the back of the Campbell’s Corner general
store.
Over the next two years, Glassie would record the deep repertoire of
Ola Belle Reed – folk ballads, minstrel songs, country standards, and
originals like “I’ve Endured,” penned by Ola Belle herself. Glassie also
chronicled the remarkable story of the migration of communities from
the Blue Ridge Mountains toward the Mason-Dixon Line prior to WWII.
Some four decades later, Maryland state folklorist Clifford Murphy
struck out to discover if this rich musical tradition still existed in
the small Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania towns where it once
flourished in 2009. Murphy, amazed by what he encountered, began making
audio recordings to document the descendants of Ola Belle’s musical
legacy. Ola Belle Reed died in 2002 yet her influence is still
reverberating throughout old time and traditional music."

About Ola Belle Reed:
"Born to a musical family in the mountains of Ashe County, North Carolina
in 1913, Ola Belle Reed became a prolific songwriter and performer.
Known for her unique style of banjo playing and singing, Ola Belle Reed
inspired many musicians throughout her life. Thirteen years after her
death in 2002 yet her influence is still reverberating throughout old
time and traditional music." -Dust-to-Digital

Pictures Of Sound

1000 Years of Educed Audio: 980-1980

Hardcover with CD

Using modern technology, Patrick Feaster is on a mission to resurrect
long-vanished voices and sounds—many of which were never intended to be
revived.
Over the past thousand years, countless images have been created to
depict sound in forms that theoretically could be “played” just as
though they were modern sound recordings. Now, for the first time in
history, this compilation uses innovative digital techniques to convert
historic “pictures of sound” dating back as far as the Middle Ages
directly into meaningful audio. It contains the world’s oldest known
“sound recordings” in the sense of sound vibrations automatically
recorded out of the air—the groundbreaking phonautograms recorded in
Paris by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in the 1850s and 1860s—as
well as the oldest gramophone records available anywhere for listening
today, including inventor Emile Berliner’s recitation of “Der
Handschuh,” played back from an illustration in a magazine, which
international news media recently proclaimed to be the oldest audible
“record” in the tradition of 78s and vintage vinyl. Other highlights
include the oldest known recording of identifiable words spoken in the
English language (1878) and the world’s oldest surviving “trick
recording” (1889). But Pictures of Sound pursues the thread even further
into the past than that by “playing” everything from medieval music
manuscripts to historic telegrams, and from seventeenth-century barrel
organ programs to eighteenth-century “notations” of Shakespearean
recitation.
In short, this isn’t just another collection of historical audio—it redefines what “historical audio” is. -Dust-to-Digital

John Fahey

Your Past Comes Back To Haunt You: The Fonotone Years 1958-1965

"As with all histories, context and an appreciation for the times are
essential. In 1958, when the earliest of these recordings were made
there were probably no more than a handful of reissues of pre-war
country blues 78s available on record in the United States. The
long-playing 33 1/3 record was, itself, only a recent invention. Today,
with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pre-war blues and hillbilly
reissues available and in print, when it’s possible to walk into any
halfway decent record store (to the extent record stores, halfway decent
or otherwise, still exist) and find the complete recordings of Charley
Patton or Blind Willie Johnson, it may be difficult to comprehend just
how obscure and how otherworldly this music once was." — Glenn Jones,
from the Introduction toYour Past Comes Back to Haunt You

Opika Pende

Africa At 78 RPM: Recordings from 1909-1960s

Book and 4 CDs in slipcase

From the Introduction to Opika Pende:
"It is truly astonishing to consider the tremendous variety of music
that was pressed to shellac discs on the continent of Africa. Popular
songs, topical songs, work songs, comic songs, songs of worship, ritual,
dance, and praise—the sheer range of musical styles resists any easy
categorization. Further, African geography itself resists boundaries.
The boundaries of cultures and languages are often far more complex than
political boundaries. Complicating things further, entire countries
seem to have been skipped over by both commercial 78 rpm record
companies and ethnographers during the 78 rpm era. No doubt it was the
same with many cultures. But that doesn’t mean that 78s weren’t
everywhere, even in remote parts of the continent. By the mid-1960s, 78s
were still a popular if not preferred medium in much of Africa, as a
significant amount of the population still used wind-up gramophone
players.
I have created this compilation with one simple goal in mind: to
showcase a diverse amount of long-forgotten music from Africa that
transports me as a listener. It is one person’s offering of music that
is wholly unavailable except in its original elusive and fragile format.
While it is not definitive, nor am I attempting to construct or invent a
narrative, there are important connections to be made. Around one
musical corner is another corner, and another. Within these 100 tracks,
traditional music stands side by side with popular music as traditional
culture coexists with so-called modernity. As a non-African, I offer
this set as an example of the riches that lay in waiting when
considering the tens of thousands of phenomenal African 78 rpm discs
that were issued, played, dispersed, and in large part, forgotten."
“Opika Pende,” is a saying in the Lingala language that means “be
strong” or “stand firm.” It can also mean “resist.” — Jonathan Ward,
2011